The Implications of "Rural Art"

I would like to think that implicit in Brotman’s use of the term ‘rural arts’ is a challenge to an assumed hierarchy of production in the arts. While Brotman acknowledges a vital and central role of professional artists in rural areas, he insists that it is the intersection of amateur, recreational and professional activity that brings about transformation. If we are to assume that a transformation of all participants is entailed, this is an invigorating reminder that privileged discourses of value attached to art objects per se should be seen for the ideological role that they play in justifying certain types of art production. Brotman reminds us that an emergent form negotiated through dialogue and collaborative exchange offers an equally important discourse of value. This challenge associated with the proclamation of a ‘rural arts’, namely recognition of the viability of ‘inclusion’, demands a review of the core products of the cultural establishment and its object-led values (3). To date, it is still the practice of many to relegate contextual evidence to a limiting reality against which the supremely controlled and revered product is viewed, and against which the product is deemed to rebel.

There are several implications in relation to recognizing the fundamental place of context in a participatory ‘rural arts’. Not least of these challenges is fear that attention shifted away from the primary control of the artist (whether director, choreographer or composer) is akin to unleashing an unpredictable chaos of intervening contextual components. The problem of how to value (maintain/preserve/distribute) non-object (read more process-driven) works has been addressed by numerous writers and critics but it is a problem that does not go way. For cultural institutions to embrace the values of a ‘rural arts’ such as that proposed by Brotman, would entail that they value cooperatively (dare we say democratically) evolved works as well as the potentially fragmented perceptions and incoherent discourses that inform them. This would threaten the still dominant fiction of the monologic work produced by a gifted individual who has exclusive power to shape an artistic experience and to ensure a ‘universal’ and transcendent response. If ‘rural arts’ were to be afforded an equal place of value in the hearts of individual professional artists and at the tables of dominant cultural institutions, then not only would the aforementioned notion be under threat but also (paradoxically) assumed avant-garde paradigms of production. With the voice of forebears such as Shklovsky and Adorno, some concerned professionals might ask what space is reserved for defamilarising the all-too familiar, if these boundaries between context and work dissolve and if boundaries between the informed viewer/audience and the unconscious or conservative citizen are removed? Such reservations are associated with attendant concerns about entrenching parochialism and giving in to ‘low standards’. One cannot presume that these arguments have played themselves out in our professional institutions of culture.

It is also often assumed that privileging context in the manner suggested by the production of ‘rural arts’ would lead to a disconnection from a vibrant core of international accomplishments that circulate on display as part of a sponsored global core. One of the most rewarding challenges for the professional artists is that of facilitating critical reflection on the part of a community that might otherwise be less circumspect with regard to cultural products and the design of their environments. Rasheed Araeen refers to this as a shift to the “power of the imagination of the community” enabling them to bypass the “tendrils of global capitalism” (Walsh 2001). The exact form and level of criticality that community empowerment takes through participatory art work varies considerably but what is of significance here is Araeen’s suggestion that what is regarded as global currency need not be accepted as the means of exchange and that, in place of this, the unique and diverse voices from the so-called margins be seen for their independent strength. ‘Rural arts’ can facilitate a larger base of producers and consumers of culture, and a community that is conscious of how it is positioned in relation to cultural production, is conscious of the nuances of form, of social design and of its own everyday conduct. If essential components of a rural art are the training of artists and extension of cultural facilities then, equally, it has as an essential component of inbuilt criticality in relation to the means of production and the reception of culture.